The Whole Sort of General Mish Mash
by Duck Life
Summary: Ryan and Esposito don't recognize her. People who should be dead are alive, people who shouldn't know her do. All Kate wants to do is solve a murder and figure out what's going on. Multichap. Please R&R! AU in a way. Title from "Mostly Harmless".
1. Chapter 1

_"The first thing to realize about parallel universes, the _Guide _says, is that they are not parallel." - Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams_

* * *

><p>"<em>Roy Montgomery taught me what it meant to be a cop," I said, hanging onto the podium mainly to avoid falling over. This speech was harder to give than I'd thought it would be. "He taught me that we are bound by our choices, but we are more than our mistakes. Captain Montgomery once said to me that, for us there is no victory. There are only battles. And in the end, the best you could hope for is to find a place to make your stand. And if you're very lucky, you find someone willing to stand with you." <em>

_Heavy glance at Castle. That part wasn't written down, but I knew it well enough. Had to let him know he was forgiven from our fight- some things were more important. _

"_Our captain would want us to carry on the fight. And even if there is one bleak outcome, we will keep fighting until we can make a new one."I finished up the eulogy and glanced at Castle. He nodded, like he was telling me I'd done well. Leaving the podium, I headed over to where he was standing._

_I could hear Evelyn Montgomery sobbing…_

Kate woke to the chirping of her alarm clock, and she rolled over in bed to slam the off button, as she did letting the details of her dream return to her. _Great. _Yet another Captain Montgomery's funeral dream, as if she needed to relive that day any more. The eulogy had been tough enough to give, it didn't help that she'd memorized it so it could hop into her dreams.

Stretching, Beckett stepped towards her closet. As she walked, she caught a glance around the room and stopped in her tracks. She blinked, rubbed her eyes. Was she imagining it, or… was the room a different color? And her bedside lamp, too… it was different. The entire room seemed slightly _off_.

She shook her head, folding open her closet doors. _Dream's over, Kate. _She really needed to get ready and head to work. New captain to meet and all. She pushed away the possibility that the clothes in her closet also seemed slightly _off_, a wardrobe comprised of clothing she'd never seen before, and some she wouldn't dream of wearing. She shook her head again and started getting dressed.

New York City was exactly as she remembered it, so that was reassuring as she walked to work. The hot dog vendors flipped their hot dogs in the same way they ad yesterday. The pedestrians were just as surly, the taxicabs just as reckless and fast. She decided to forget about the strange air about her morning, and definitely not to mention it to Castle. He would just overreact and make it out to be some CIA conspiracy or alien invasion or robotic mind control chip in her brain. Better to go the day without listening to a grown man rant on about zombie Congressmen.

The elevator, too, was just the way it always had been. She took a deep breath, fully convincing herself that she'd been suffering some kind of headache or vertigo this morning. The world was fully in place. Her head was screwed on right. The elevator buttons lit up the way she expected them to.

Kate didn't glance at her desk when she reached the bullpen, she just headed straight to the break room. She'd skipped breakfast, and hoped that some cappuccino would wake her up and drag her out of this confusing machine.

What she hadn't anticipated was the lack of the cappuccino machine sitting where it should be sitting in the break room. There was no trace of the contraption. For a moment, she contemplated some Grinch-like creature carrying away the coffee machine and explaining that one of the lights wouldn't work, so he had to take it away for fixing. When the moment was over, she wondered what the hell was going on.

Beckett could just stand there, hands on her hips, staring at the spot where the cappuccino machine used to be as if she could wish it back into existence. She stood there in shock until Kevin Ryan tried to walk into the break room, and then she snapped out of it and stopped him.

"Ryan," said Kate, "what happened to the cappuccino machine?"

He looked at her like she'd just asked him what happened to their spaceship. "What?"

"The cappuccino machine," she repeated. "Where is it?" He didn't drop the look. It was like she was the one who was acting weird.

"Ma'am, this is a police _precinct_," he said slowly. _Ma'am?_ She needed to get to the bottom of this, and soon, before the icy fist of confusion in her stomach twisted her up so much that she had a panic attack. It was like… it was like he didn't _recognize_ her.

"Ryan," she said, her voice sitting on an edge, "you know who I am… right?" So she was falling into his prank. She didn't really care, she just wanted to get back to work and get her coffee. She'd put up with the "you-should've-seen-your-face"s later.

He stared at her, zero recognition in his face, and she started to panic when he smiled. "Oh! You're… you're Kate Beckett!" She relaxed, letting her shoulders settle. "Wow. I'm sorry I didn't recognize you before… early in the morning, you know. I am a _big _fan, though."

"What?" Okay, so maybe the prank wasn't completely over. Was he pulling the Nikki Heat thing or something?

"Yeah, I loved your work in the _Knife _movies. Oh, and I just saw that guest role on _Temptation Lane_, you were awesome." He was getting that look in his eyes that he usually reserved for when Castle started talking about his books, and the icy fist in her stomach had returned. "What are you doing _here_?"

"Ryan, if you want to goof around with Castle later, that's fine, but I'm already having a bad day and I could really use a cappuccino."

"Castle?" There was that same lack of recognition. This was getting out of hand.

"Alright, I can't do this right now." She walked away from him, deciding that she wasn't going to talk to him until he started acting like a grown-up, or somebody was murdered, whichever came first. She started towards her desk, but stopped halfway there, in shock.

Sitting at her desk was a living, breathing Roy Montgomery, shifting papers around on her desk (which didn't seem like hers, once she got a look at it. Her elephants were missing and there was no sign of her little stabbed-person notepad.) As she got closer, she realized that the nameplate on the desk read "Det. Montgomery". _I really shouldn't have gotten out of bed this morning. _


	2. Chapter 2

"_One encouraging thing the _Guide _does have to say on the subject of parallel universes is that you don't stand the remotest chance of understanding it." – Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams_

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><p>Beckett stood in the middle of the bullpen, not knowing what was going on and scared of figuring it out. Her coworkers didn't recognize her, her deceased boss seemed to have taken over her job, and her cappuccino machine was missing. She now realized what had been wrong with her room this morning- she didn't own that furniture. The headboard on her bed was far too nice-looking, her bedspread was of a richer material than it should have been, and her carpet was much softer than it had been when she'd gone to sleep.<p>

From what she could gather, if this wasn't some elaborate prank Castle was putting on (and, really, she couldn't see how Captain Montgomery factored into that), she had fallen asleep last night in her own universe and woken up in a different one, one in which a living Roy Montgomery was a detective instead of a captain and she herself was an actress instead of a cop.

The entirely more likely possibility was that she had gone insane.

Maybe talking to her best friend would sort some things out. That, or it would just make matters worse. Whichever happened, going down to the morgue had to be a better alternative than standing here and waiting for Ryan to ask for her autograph. Kate was heading to the elevator when Esposito stopped her.

"Excuse me, what are you doing here?" he said, putting a hand on her shoulder to keep her from walking away. She sighed and turned around. It never _used _to be this difficult for a civilian to walk around in the bullpen, she reflected, remembering how that had ruined the time she'd attempted to tell Castle how she felt.

"Leaving."

She tried to walk away but then Ryan caught up to them and said, "Bro, that's _Kate Beckett_."

"Really?" said Esposito, looking at her carefully. "Oh, wow…" He released her shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Kate Beckett, didn't realize… what are you doing _here_?" In the few minutes she'd had to make up her mind about whatever _this _was, Kate had decided that the most effective way to progress would be to just play along.

"Research," she said. "For… a role. I'm supposed to be following Lanie Parish, is she in the morgue?"

"How should I know?" shrugged Esposito. She felt uncomfortable watching them ogle her like that, even if she was supposed to be some famous actress. It was just _weird. _

"Because, you two… 'cause… your girlfriend. She's dating… you're- because she's your girlfriend!" It wasn't so surprising that she was reduced to spluttering and stuttering. What surprised her was how long it had taken for her to get to this place.

"Me and Lanie?" laughed Esposito. "Please."

o-o-o-o-o-o

After the creative ducking and sneaking Beckett had had to do in order to reach the morgue, now that no one recognized her as a detective, the first thing she saw was Lanie leaning over a dead body. It was a familiar sight, and that familiarity gave her some peace of mind. She let that saturate in her brain for a moment before she went into the morgue to shatter it.

"Hi, Lanie," she said, striding across the room as she would were this a normal occasion. Lanie stared at her, confused.

"Hello?" said the ME. "Are you here to identify a victim?"

"No," said Kate. "Just visiting."

"Do I… know you?" said Lanie, still a bit perturbed by the way Kate had greeted her by name.

"Yeah," said Beckett, "but you don't." Lanie still looked confused. Kate sighed and leaned back against the counter. She'd always had a problem with how white and fluorescent this room was, but now she welcomed it because it was familiar. It was exactly the same as it had always been. "Okay, this is going to sound crazy, but I am your best friend."

"That does sound crazy," said Lanie, returning to her autopsy. "I don't really _have _friends." Kate's mouth popped into an "O", but she let the matter drop.

"Thing is, I'm not really sure what's going on, and I could really use my best friend to help me out." _Alright, time to give up. _It wasn't like she could _sway _Lanie into remembering her.

"Well, it's not me," said Lanie. "So if you're not here to identify a victim, I think you should get out of my morgue." Ouch. Beckett deflated, deciding that it really would have been too easy if Lanie had known who she was. On her way out, Sidney Perlmutter entered the room.

"That tox screen's back, Dr. Parish," he said, not even glancing at Kate.

"Hey there, Perlmutter," said Beckett, raising a hand half-heartedly. He glanced up at her, no recognition in his eyes.

"Who are you?" She smiled as she walked out. So that was one relationship that remained exactly the same.

* * *

><p>When her phone rang, Beckett at a little trouble answering it. For one thing, she didn't recognize the ringtone. For another, she was fairly sure she didn't recognize the phone. "Beckett" she said instinctively, weaving around a homeless man on the street. She wasn't quite sure where she was headed, but home seemed like a good idea.<p>

"Kate?" said a man on the other end of the line, and she had to remind herself that there was no need to answer with her last name.

"Yeah," she said, hoping she'd be able to determine who the man on the phone was soon.

"Did you ever call Mona back?" said the man. She wondered if there was a way to transmute her expression of utter bewilderment through a telephone call.

"No." It was probably the truth.

"Well get on that, do you want to lose this audition?" said the man. All she wanted was to understand what the hell was going on.

"I'll… I'll call her," said Kate. She hung up and started scrolling through the contacts on her phone, hoping that Mona's number was in there. If it wasn't, she was screwed- or rather, her actress-self was screwed, which at the moment appeared to be who she was… it was all terribly confusing. She scanned down, pausing at the street corner to search through her phone.

And it was there. It was in the contacts list on her phone, right below an entry that said "Mom."


	3. Chapter 3

"_It is also important to realize that they are not, strictly speaking, universes either, but it is easiest if you don't try to realize that until a little later, after you've realized that everything you've realized up to that moment is not true." – Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams_

* * *

><p>Kate Beckett sat cross-legged on the pavement at the intersection of East 12th Street and Avenue C, eyes shut, phone in her hand. If she hadn't just seen fairly convincing evidence that her mother was still alive, she might be concerned about the fact that sitting down on a New York sidewalk wasn't the safest or sanest thing to do. As it was, she was perfectly content to let the foot traffic pass her while she attempted to hang on to what still made a smidgen of sense- the insides of her eyelids.<p>

Pieces were beginning to fall into place. A picture was beginning to form. The mere fact that she could see a picture beginning to form worried her and she was pretty sure that she liked it better when she was confused.

Her mother was alive. Ergo, her mother's murder had never happened, ergo, she had never become a cop. Also, if her mother's murder had never happened then the events leading up to her mother's murder had also never happened, which explained the living breathing not-a-captain Captain sitting at her desk.

Rationally, she couldn't just sit here on this concrete for the rest of her life. She had a job as an actress (apparently) and she'd have to keep that. She'd grow hungry, it would rain, she'd grow uncomfortable under the stares of passing pedestrians. Still, a part of her (a large part of her) didn't want to leave. This world, or parallel universe or acid trip or whatever it was, was too hectic and full of twists and turns and changes. If she just sat here on the sidewalk she could avoid all that.

Her cell phone rang again, and she opened her eyes to glance at the screen. It was Mona. With a deep breath, Kate made her decision, turned off her phone, stood up, and hailed a taxi.

* * *

><p>Beckett stood in front of the door to Richard Castle's apartment, deliberating. Going in and watching Castle not recognize her could mess with her head more than anything else. On the other hand, seeing Castle at all might make her feel better. Gathering her courage, she knocked on the door and watched as it opened moments later.<p>

"Hey!" said Castle, seeing her as he opened the door. "I thought you were in LA."

"You… you know who I am," she said, startled but happy.

"Of course I do, _Maia Sound_," he said jokingly, inviting her into the loft. "You here to get some more shadowing in with me and Amy?" Alright, so she didn't know who this Amy was, or what the significance of "Maia Sound" was, but so far so good. He _recognized _her.

"Actually, I just… I'm having a weird day. And I was in New York, and I didn't know who else to come talk to…" He closed the door behind her, turning to look at her with a concerned expression.

"Do you want something to drink?" he asked, leading her to the couch. The furniture here was just the way she remembered it. More reassurances. Add that to the fact that not only did he know who she was, but he seemed to care about her wellbeing, and her frustrating morning was beginning to turn into a slightly better day.

"Water." She hadn't until now realized how thirsty she really was. "Lots of water."

"Are you in some kind of trouble?" asked Castle while he poured her water. The many different connotations and definitions for "trouble" rushed into her mind- pregnant trouble, drug trouble, money trouble. She wasn't quite sure how to describe her situation.

"The butterfly effect is screwing with my brain." There were several books lying on the coffee table in front of her, and one of them mentioned something about Maia Sound on the back. While Castle filled his own glass of ginger ale, Kate picked up that book and read the summary on the back.

_Singer Maia Sound had it all- best friends, money, and excellent talent… until a competitor band, The Misfits, burned down her father's foster home and ran her out of the family fortune. Now Maia must gather up her friends for a concert to raise money for the orphans and bring The Misfits to justice, but not if the new CEO of her father's company has anything to say about it._

It was difficult to avoid rolling her eyes. "Let me guess," she muttered to herself, "it's called _Sound Wave_." She flipped the book over to see that the title was, in fact, _Sound Wave. _"Of course."

"Here's your water," he said, handing the glass to her as he sat down in the arm chair across from her with his ginger ale. "Now… what's wrong?"

Kate sighed. "Have you ever just woken up one morning and _nothing _is the way you always remembered it?"

"You mean like in _Hangover_?" said Castle. _Great_, she thought to herself. She had a completely different career and the series written based on her had vanished from existence, but _Hangover _was still around.

"No," she sighed, sipping her water to avoid talking. She wasn't quite sure how to proceed. "You're into all that sci-fi conspiracy stuff, right?" She was trying to draw comparisons between this guy and the Castle that she knew and… that she knew.

"Always," he said. She felt a twinge in her chest.

"Well," she started, deciding to just get it done with, "the thing is… it's… here's what the thing is. I'm not really an actress."

"Is that like 'I'm not really a waitress'?" he asked with a cocky grin. She set her mouth in a line, worried that he wouldn't take her seriously.

"No," she said, keeping her face as straight as was humanly possible. "I'm _really _not an actress. At least, last night I wasn't. Last night I was an NYPD detective, and when I woke up everything was different and I wasn't a detective and my mom was alive and the people who are supposed to know me don't-"

"Okay, okay, I believe you," said Castle, crossing the distance between them swiftly and moving to sit beside her on the couch. He put an arm around her like it was the simplest thing in the world, trying to comfort her.

"Just like that?" said Kate, surprised. She was even more surprised that the rims beneath her eyes were damp, and her throat was catching. "Ryan and Esposito didn't believe me."

"I've got a really open mind," he shrugged.

"I know." She exhaled and wiped her eyes, then started disentangling herself from Castle. "You don't really believe me, do you?"

"Believe is such a vague word-"

"It's okay," she said. "I don't believe me either. I probably have some sort of brain tumor. You might not even be real." She poked him. He was real.

"It would make a cool story," he said. "If that were the sort of thing I wrote."

"What kinds of things do you write?" she asked. That _Sound Wave _book had not at all seemed like the kind of thing Castle would write.

"Celebrity stuff," he said. "People living the good life until something bad happens and then their life… stops being the good life." Again, it was difficult to not roll her eyes. "I follow a lot of heiresses, actors… you know this, I asked to follow _you _once."

"Of course you did." Some things never changed. "Look, Rick, I'm sorry I told you all this, maybe I'm just having a weird day."

"Weird days are good, Kate," he said. "They keep life interesting."

"I think I liked my boring catching-murderers life," she sighed, downing the rest of her water. "Thanks for the talk. And the water."

"Looking forward to seeing _Sound Wave _on the big screen," said Castle as she stood up. "Oh, and if you run into Amy, would you not mention New Year's? She and I are kind of… almost-there. If you know what I mean." There was that mysterious Amy again. Kate refused to believe that the sudden jerk in her stomach was jealousy. If anything, the water he'd given her was past its expiration date. Yeah, that was it.

"What about New Year's?" she asked. If she was going to avoid telling someone she didn't know something she didn't know, she may as well know what the thing she wasn't supposed to say was.

"The naked part," laughed Castle. She nodded, chewing on her lip to avoid freaking out.

"Right," she said when she had recovered herself. "I'll see you around, Castle."

"See you." She took a deep breath and headed out the door into the upside-down inside-out world.

**A/N: Shout-out next chapter if anyone can guess the 80's cartoon from which Sound Wave borrows a lot. **


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Yes, chezchuckles got it right, the show that Castle's book was borrowing from was the 80's cartoon Jem. Also, apologies for not updating sooner. I've just been busy, went through a move and I've had a lot of summer reading. Good news is, from here on out the story should be back on track and updates will be much sooner. Thanks for reading, reviews always appreciated!**

* * *

><p>"<em>Please feel free to blither now." – Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams<em>

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><p>Kate walked home, lost in her thoughts. She'd slept with Castle. Well, not <em>she <em>but the she that was an actress that she had now become through some unexplainable transition. Really, she theorized as she climbed the stairs to her apartment, it just wasn't fair. She didn't even _remember _sleeping with Castle, and yet she had to face the repercussions. All the consequences and none of the benefits.

She shook her head like these thoughts would go flying out and never trouble her again before going into her apartment. _Hey_, she realized as she dropped her purse on the counter, _if my old apartment never exploded, why am I living here_? The answer was pretty clear, though- this place was more expensive. It made sense that Actress-Kate wouldn't be caught dead in that old apartment, but this place was nice.

And there was the issue again- _she'd slept with Castle_. It seemed extremely out-of-character, but then so did acting in the _Knife _movies. And if she'd had sex with Castle, then who else? Concerned, Kate went into her bedroom and pulled out the address book she kept in her nightstand of all her romantic endeavors. She flipped through it and her mouth popped open- it was completely full of names and numbers. With a groan, she noticed that "Volume One" was written on the side.

"Oh, my God," she said to herself, slumping back on the bed and running her hands through her hair. She was a slut. Well, not _she _but the she that was an actress that she had now become through some unexplainable transition. It was at times like this that she really wished she could talk to her mother.

Kate blinked and glanced up. She _could _talk to her mother. In fact, it was the ability that she had to talk to her mother that seemed to have put this strange universe into action. She stood up and went for her purse.

* * *

><p>A little less than an hour later, Beckett pulled up outside her mother and father's house in the red convertible whose keys she'd found she had possession of. (After that, it was only a matter of going into the nearest parking garage and clicking the keys until something blinked.)<p>

The house looked mostly the same as it did in the world she knew, where it only belonged to her dad, except more of her mom's pink plastic flamingos were standing in the yard. She killed the engine and stepped out of the car, shutting the car door behind her as quietly as was possible. It was like she didn't want to disturb this house that contained her living mother, like any slight change in the atmosphere would shatter everything.

That need not to disturb anything got in the way a bit when it came to the matter of knocking or ringing. She decided to knock, but as softly as she could and still be sure that someone inside heard it. There was a long moment where she worried that the house and the hope of seeing her mother again would suddenly be swept out from under her feet. Then, Johanna Beckett answered the door.

"Mom," said Kate, her voice catching in her throat. Any stress or concern about the upsetting state of her life evaporated upon seeing the woman who had raised her. She was just happy to see the mother she thought she'd never see again.

"Hi, Kate," said Johanna, sounding a bit confused. "What are you doing here?"

"I, um… I just wanted to see you," she said, finding it difficult to articulate what she wanted to say. She'd spent almost thirteen years coping with the loss of her mother, and here she was, no need to cope. It was startling, but it was a pleasant kind of startling.

Johanna's expression changed from confusion to what looked like some combination of sternness and exasperation. It didn't make sense to Kate, and she wondered what was wrong. "How much do you want?" her mother sighed, disappointment seeping from every angle of her body. Kate reacted like she'd been slapped.

"What are you talking about?" said Kate. "Mom, I just wanted to _see _you. Talk to you."

"Of course you did," said Johanna, voice full of sarcasm. She squinted then, looking more closely at Kate. "Are you high again?"

"Mom!" said Kate, shocked. "I wanted to _talk _to you."

"Sure you do," said Johanna, beginning to close the door. "You're not _that _good of an actress, Kate." With that, she shut the front door in her face.

* * *

><p>Kate Beckett slumped onto the couch she didn't remember having before and flipped on the far-too-big TV in an attempt to drown out her thoughts. It didn't work very well, and even though she tried to pay attention to the blonde news lady on the screen, she was pulled back into thoughts about her mother's reaction to seeing her.<p>

_So this would have been the natural progression of things_, she thought to herself. If Montgomery had never shot Bob Armand, if "the Dragon" had never hired Dick Coonan to kill her mother, this is where she would end up: a famous actress who slept around and had a dysfunctional relationship with her mother.

She picked up the remote, planning on channel-surfing until she found something comforting and familiar like _Friends _or _Saved by the Bell_ when she realized what story was on the news- Alan Basher had just been found murdered in his home. She wouldn't have sat up and stared frozen at the screen if she didn't remember his name from her brief flip through her book of past romances.

As it was, she very clearly remembered seeing his name in there. The she that was an actress that she had now become through some unexplainable transition had had a relationship with the man whose murder was being covered on the news on that far-too-big TV, and that got under her skin more than anything else had today.


	5. Chapter 5

"_The reason they are not universes is that any given universe is not actually a _thing _as such, but is just a way of looking at what is technically known as the WSOGMM, or Whole Sort of General Mish Mash." – Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams_

* * *

><p>The next morning found Kate Beckett hurrying up to Ryan and Esposito in the middle of the 12th precinct. "You have to let me use your resources," she insisted, following the two of them when they tried to walk away from her. "Alan Basher's been murdered and I need to catch the killer!"<p>

"Alan Basher?" said Ryan, shaking his head. "That's across town, he's not even in our jurisdiction."

"Well I'm not a cop, apparently, so I don't have a jurisdiction," reasoned Kate, stepping in front of them to keep them from progressing. "I feel like if I can solve his murder, everything else will just kind of fall into place."

"That's a nice theory," said Esposito, adopting an expression she knew he saved for the occasional insane witness or distraught family member, "but maybe you just need to take a vacation or something, get over this grief."

"It's not grief!" she said, stepping in front of him again when he tried to walk around her. "I didn't even know him! I mean, I did, but I don't _remember _because something very, very weird is going on and all I want to do is get back to my own time and space but until that happens the least I can do is go about my business as usual and solving murders."

"Kate," said Ryan, "we're sorry about your ex-boyfriend, but civilians can't just storm in here and use police resources."

"I'm not a civilian!" she said, desperate to find a way to prove this point. "I'm an NYPD Homicide Detective. My badge number is 0334."

"That's Montgomery's badge number," said Esposito, not believing her. In their minds, she'd just noticed Montgomery's badge number and memorized it for her own use.

"Yours is 1077," said Beckett, pointing at Esposito. "You used to work at the 54th precinct but then you were transferred after your partner Ike Thornton faked his death." Ryan tensed up, looking back and forth between the actress and his partner. Esposito's eyes had clouded up, and he seemed momentarily distraught.

"Ike Thornton," he said carefully, "did not _fake _his _death_." He stalked off, and Ryan followed him after turning around to glare at Beckett. As they walked away, Kate ran her fingers through her hair and wondered what she was going to do. She just _had _to work this case, _had _to find Alan's killer. It was in her bones. She knew with some sort of heightened sense of omnipotence that this was something that was absolutely necessary for her to do. The _how _she was still a little foggy on.

_There's one person who's got my back no matter what universe we're in_, she thought to herself as she left the 12th precinct.

* * *

><p>"Castle," said Beckett into her phone, weaving in between the pedestrians on the sidewalk outside of the precinct. "It's Kate. I need your help."<p>

"With what?" asked Castle on the other end of the line. "Character research?"

"No," said Kate. "Murder."

"You want me to help you kill someone?" She had to smile at the fact that he didn't sound immediately repelled, like he'd actually help her kill someone. That was Castle, alright.

"No," she said again. "I want you to help me catch a murderer."

For a while, the other end of the line was silent. She wondered if he'd hung up or if he was just mulling it over. The thought gave her a sinking in her stomach- she wasn't sure if she would be able to do this without Castle's help. Finally, he said, "Kate, are you alright?"

"No, Castle," she said. "No, I am most definitely _not _'alright'."

* * *

><p>Minutes later she stood in his apartment, pacing around the room because she was too jittery to sit down or to even stand still. Castle stood in his bathrobe in the middle of the room, watching her and wondering if she'd gone insane. "Kate, maybe you want to sit down?" he said, going with the "she's crazy" theory.<p>

"No," she said. "And listen, you don't have to believe me but you should know that something strange is going on. And I'm not crazy, and I'm not lying, something legitimately strange is going on."

"Okay," he said, obviously not believing her but willing to play along. "Something strange is going on." She stopped pacing and turned to face him, hands on her hips. Despite what she'd said, she felt that he actually did _have _to believe her or she wouldn't be able to work with him.

"Your given name is Richard Alexander Rodgers," she said. "You changed it to Richard Edgar Castle when you started writing. Your favorite TV show is _Firefly_ and you like to make weird breakfasts like s'morelettes." He was clearly impressed. If this solving murder thing didn't work out, she could always set up shop as an oracle or psychic and astonish people with her other-universe knowledge. "Now do you believe that something weird is going on?"

"Fine," he said. "_Something _is going on."

"And I don't know what it is." She resumed her pacing, planning out tactics in her head. She knew how to go rogue, she'd done it with Castle before. And she was a good detective, so she'd be able to sneak around sufficiently. "No one's going to take me seriously as a detective if I'm a famous actress," she realized.

"People took Reagan seriously as president," shrugged Castle.

"Great," she said, "so all I have to do is win a war and then I'll be able to solve this murder." She would need a disguise, a new name, and a badge. "You once told me you had a guy everywhere."

"I never told you that," muttered Castle, but she barely took note of it.

"Well, the you that I know," she said. "But it's true, right?"

"Yeah," he said. "What do you need?"

"I need a police badge," she said. "Handcuffs. A gun. Lock picks."

"Basically, police attire?" said Castle, fingering his cell phone. She nodded. As he dialed the first number, he glanced up at her and said, "You know you could get in a lot of trouble for impersonating a detective."

"Yeah," she said. "So are you willing to go down with me or are you scared?"

"No, I'm in," he said quickly, resuming his dialing. "Just hope you know what you're getting into." He held the phone up to his ear.

"Oh, I know, Castle," said Beckett. "I know exactly what I'm getting into."


	6. Chapter 6

"_The Whole Sort of General Mish Mash doesn't actually exist either, but is just the sum total of all the different ways there would be of looking at it if it did." – Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams_

* * *

><p>Castle had everything Beckett needed by noon the next day. She had to hand it to him, his sources were incredibly efficient. She made a mental note to use "his guys" more often if she ever got back into her own universe. She was a bit put-out by having to wait so long after Alan Basher's death to start investigating, but she understood that it was the best she could do.<p>

"You know this is one of the badges they actually used in _Scream3_?" said Castle with a smile, handing her a prop badge. Too difficult to obtain an actual police badge, she guessed.

"Thanks, Castle," she said, slipping it into the bag she was holding against her leg as she turned to leave. She was already planning out her first move- canvassing Alan Basher's apartment building to get details and figure out exactly what had happened.

"Whoa, where are you going?" he said, sticking a foot in the door as she tried to walk away. "I'm coming with you, aren't I?"

She deliberated. On the one hand, it would be refreshingly familiar to have Castle at her side, as her partner. On the other hand, this was a Castle sans all the "training" the Castle from her universe had. He'd never followed her before. He'd never followed a _cop _before, and all of his experience was with actors and singers.

"It'll be dangerous," she said, hoping she could scare him off without actually having to make a decision.

"I live for danger," he said with that familiar cocky grin.

"Fine," she sighed, walking out of his apartment and expecting him to follow her. After all, it could be useful to have someone around who understood more about this universe than she did.

* * *

><p>Beckett couldn't stop looking back over her shoulder as she walked with Castle down the street to the address for Basher that she'd found in her address book. Rationally, she knew it was ridiculous- no one was after her (not yet anyway), and she was wearing dark sunglasses and a hat over her pinned up hair, minimizing the chances of someone recognizing her. For the first time, she really felt pleased about Natalia Rhodes' visit to the precinct a few months ago; at least she'd managed to pick up a few tricks.<p>

"You wanna get a hot dog?" said Castle, indicating a hot dog vendor as they waited to cross the street. Trying not to smile, Kate considered tweaking his nose like she had the first time he'd ever asked her that question, purely for familiarity and fun. She reconsidered though, realizing that it would just confuse and probably anger him.

"Nah," she shrugged. Her stomach was rolling too much for her to feel hungry. "You can get one."

After that short detour, Beckett and Castle plus one foot-long frank headed across the street to Alan's apartment building. The place looked normal from the outside, but she was sure that the victim's actual apartment would be much busier with cop activity.

"How do we get in?" she pondered aloud as they stood outside the front doors to the building. Without a key, she would have to buzz someone who lived in the building to let her in. Kate frowned- this was a lot more difficult without police authority, and she wasn't quite sure she wanted to pull out her fake cop persona so soon in their search, just in case it went downhill.

Castle hit the first button. "Pizza guy."

"Wrong apartment," answered back a static-filled voice.

"What are you doing?" said Beckett, staring at him.

"This is New York, somebody must've ordered a pizza," he shrugged, hitting the second button. "Pizza guy."

"No one ordered a pizza," said a different but equally static-filled voice.

He got lucky the sixth time he tried, and the door unlocked. He waggled his eyebrows at Kate, to which she just rolled her eyes and pushed open the door. It was nice- reminded her of the way the world was supposed to be.

"Alan lived on the fifth…" Beckett trailed off as a balding man stepped onto the elevator with them. She coughed, hoping he hadn't overheard, and jabbed at the 5 button. The three of them rode up in silence, and she slowly came to realize that on this excruciatingly long elevator ride, the balding man was staring at her like he recognized her but couldn't quite place her.

_So much for my genius disguise_. She flicked her eyes over to Castle, nodding in the smallest motions she could manage, trying to let him know that she might be recognized. He grinned, stepped around her, and held out a hand to shake.

"Hi, couldn't help notice you were staring. Yes, it's really me, Rick Castle." The man swerved his gaze, somewhat reluctantly, from Kate to the man standing in front of him.

"The writer?"

"Yup." He popped the "p" at the end of the word. "You want an autograph?" The balding man shrugged and pulled out a faded receipt from his pocket and a pen.

"Sure, my daughter's a huge fan." Castle started signing. "Hey, how come you wrote that Derrick Storm's show was cancelled? I mean, that's just a tragedy when an actor's show gets cut off, I was really mad."

"Sorry," mumbled Castle as the man took his autograph and walked out on the fourth floor. Beckett shot him a sideways glance as the elevator doors slid back shut, but she said nothing.

Kate dragged Castle down the hall towards Alan Basher's apartment, ducking to avoid eye contact with the cops grouped in the hallway. Fortunately for her, they seemed occupied with investigating the robbery across the hall and barely took notice as she stepped into Basher's apartment, on which the lock was broken.

The place was big- the kind a rich actor like Basher could afford. It was roped off with yellow tape (which she chose to ignore). "Alright," said Beckett, shutting the door behind her. "Let's get started."


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: I'm sooo sorry for going MIA for a month. I promise I didn't forget about this story. My laptop broke, so I had to get a new one, and then I went forever without MS Word on the new one. The biggest problem is that I meant to have this finished before the premiere, and now the ending might make less sense now that the timeline's a little off. Again, I apologize. I hope everyone continues to enjoy the story. **

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><p>"<em>It makes an apparently solid image in your mind. But it's all just images in the Mish Mash." – Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams<em>

* * *

><p>Kate Beckett had been to crime scenes before with Castle. At least, she herself remembered going to crime scenes with him. The actuality of her recollection being accurate, she realized as he reached out to touch a shard of shattered window ungloved, was as nonexistent in this place and time as Detective Beckett was. The self she knew didn't exist, and she was having trouble adapting. It was slightly easier to fall into the step of correcting her partner, though.<p>

"Castle!" hissed Beckett. "Don't touch that." She pulled out a pair of the blue latex gloves that he'd provided her with and slipped them to him before donning a pair herself.

"I wasn't," he said defensively as he stretched the gloves over his hands. He resumed his inspection of the glass. "You know," he said without looking up, "you keep acting like you know me so well, and I don't really know you." She hid her smile- this much had stayed the same: that she knew so much about him while she remained in a chrysalis of mystery. "I mean, we've only met once before."

"Pretty memorable meeting," she said, slowly beginning to walk around the room. She was fishing based on what he'd said before she'd left the previous night, about New Year's. She wanted details, some kind of explanation. All she got was a sort of musing half-chuckle from Castle before he continued in his investigating.

There were obvious signs of a struggle- the cracked window, for one, and the spatter of blood on the Berber carpet. The blood wasn't enough to make bleeding out the cause of death.

She almost felt like rolling her eyes back at herself, and then she frowned. You didn't get cause of death from the crime scene, you got it from the autopsy. Maybe the OCME would've made a better first stop."We'll finish up here and then see if we can get into Basher's autopsy," said Beckett, heading into the kitchen.

"But this is cool," said Castle, kneeling down to get a better look at the blood on the carpet. "My first crime scene." She felt like correcting him, but didn't bother. The "I'm right and everyone else in the whole world is wrong" method was getting kind of old. Maybe, she thought to herself as she examined the pad of paper beside Alan Basher's telephone, it would just be simpler for her to go along with everything. To steer into the skid.

* * *

><p>"Detective Nikki Heat," announced Beckett, striding into the OCME and flashing her fake badge, hopefully fast enough so that the guard couldn't tell it wasn't real. Castle glanced at her and mouthed the name "Nikki Heat" confusedly, but she brushed him off. No need to explain something she wished he would already know.<p>

It took a lot of wheedling to actually get down to the morgue. She tried to sneak around, but she was less lucky this time, and people kept catching her. In the end, she found it was easier to threaten to call supervisors than to make up an evasive lie. It was in this manner that she and Castle made it down to the morgue where she'd figured out Alan Basher's body was.

"Wouldn't it have been easier to introduce yourself as Basher's ex who wanted to say goodbye to the body?" Castle pointed out while they stood outside the door. Beckett stared at him- she hadn't even thought of that.

"I'm going to pretend that's not true," she said, and went inside.

"Excuse me?" said the ME as he set his scalpel down. "This is a private autopsy."

"Detective Nikki Heat, I'm assisting on a case," said Kate, stepping forward and approaching the table. She flashed her badge again, still trying to gauge the right amount of time to hold it up, long enough to not look suspicious but short enough so no one could inspect it carefully. "I need the rundown on Alan Basher's homicide."

"I've got his file right here," he said, handing her a manila envelope. She took it carefully, unsure of whether to be ecstatic that they'd gotten the file so easily or disconcerted that just anyone could walk in and get autopsy files.

"Thank you," said Kate, skimming the pages. It had been a stabbing that killed Basher; that made sense. She'd guessed as much from the crime scene. There probably wouldn't have been so many signs of struggle if it had been a simple gunshot.

Multiple stab wounds- one low-angle thrust to the kidney and then additional stab wounds at seemingly random points on the body. The ME had determined that the ones after the kidney were delivered after Basher was immobilized and on the floor.

_Low-angle thrust to the kidney… additional stab wounds…_

Something was there, something was brushing at the edge of her consciousness and willing her to fit all the pieces together. _Low-angle thrust to the kidney. Additional stab wounds, random additional stab wounds. _

"Excuse me, was there a cast made of the murder weapon that killed Basher?" she asked the ME.

"Uh, yeah," he said, turning away from the autopsy table to a table behind him. There were several trays covered in what looked like paper towels. He selected one and carefully lifted back the cover to show her. Slipping another latex glove over her right hand, she reached for the mold of the knife.

_I've held this knife before._

That thought struck her mind and clung there. She'd held this knife before. The _real _she, Detective Kate, not the she that was an actress that she had now become through some unexplainable transition. From there it was just a matter of working backward, really, but it wasn't that difficult.

It was an important moment, the one time before that she'd held this particular knife. A very important moment. As impossible as it was- after all, she _clearly _remembered killing the wielder of this knife- she knew who the killer was. There was no doubt in her mind.

Dick Coonan had killed Alan Basher.


	8. Chapter 8

"_This was definitely the Earth. Or rather, it most definitely was not." – Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams_

* * *

><p>"It's Dick Coonan!" exclaimed Beckett as she and Castle walked away from the OCME. She kept making wide gestures with her hands and was walking very fast. Castle walked a few steps behind her, partly because she was walking faster than him and partly because her wide gestures kept smacking him in the face. She seemed not to notice. "Dick <em>Coonan<em> killed Basher!"

"Right," said Castle, opting to act like he knew what was going on. "Who is he again?"

"Coonan killed my mom," she said. Her eyes darkened like she was sad, but the electricity of realizing that she knew Alan Basher's murderer was pumping her full of an energy that could not be dimmed.

"Your mom is alive," Rick reminded her as they crossed the street. He stuck closer to her on the crosswalk, worried that in her energetic state she would misstep and get struck by a car. As a result, he was still standing close to her when she whipped around on the other side of the road and inadvertently thwacked him with her wildly gesturing hand.

"Yeah, well Esposito still thinks Ike Thornton is dead," she said, not even noticing that she'd hit her partner. "Hell, maybe he _is_. Montgomery's alive. No reason Coonan shouldn't still be alive."

"I have no idea who you're talking about," he said, rubbing his injured nose.

"In fact," said Beckett, coming to a complete stop in the middle of the sidewalk, "if my mom never died, then I never ran into Coonan, so of _course _he's still alive." Castle pulled her over to the side of the pavement, against the wall of a bank, to get her out of the way of foot traffic.

"Hey," he said. He put a hand on her shoulder to keep her from going forward. "Kate, can we just… just stop for a sec?"

"Why?" she said, brushing his hand off of her shoulder. "I _know _who killed Basher, we should be going and arresting him!"

"Okay, first of all, we're not _really _cops, remember?" said Castle, replacing his restraining hand on her shoulder. "And second, you _shouldn't _know who killed Basher. Do you get that? It makes _no sense_. You have no reason to know who Dick Coonan is, far as I can figure."

"But…" She took a deep breath, leaning against the wall behind her. She hadn't exactly considered this before- she'd been so caught up in getting trapped in this topsy-turvy world that she hadn't stopped to realize that _she _was the odd one. Maybe to her it seemed like she was the only one who was right in a crazy world, but that wasn't how everyone else saw it. It wasn't how Ryan and Esposito saw it. It wasn't how Castle saw it.

"Kate, I'm worried about you." He took a deep breath, like he was preparing to go underwater. "I think it might be best if you went back into rehab."

"No," she said, shaking her head back and forth in quick, repetitive motions. "No, no, I can't go to rehab." _Great. Now not only am I losing my partner, but I have "Rehab" stuck in my head. _"They'll call me crazy, they'll send me to a mental institution!"

He took her elbows. "Look, I'm sorry, but maybe that would be best."

She shook him off of her for the second time. "You don't get it! _Nobody _understands what's happening to me!" She sighed and shook her head, forcing unshed tears of frustration back into her head.

"Then… explain it to me," he pleaded. He reminded her of the shipper name he'd made up for Esposito and Lanie, and she almost smiled. It was just more proof that she didn't belong here, in a universe where Esplanie didn't even kind of exist, neither the word nor the couple.

"Okay," she said, running her fingers through her hair as she tried to figure out how she was going to- successfully – explain her situation this time. "You know that movie _Back to the Future_?"

"Yeah."

"Oh good, that still exists." He nodded along, but he didn't really look sure of where she was going with this. "Well, there's that part where Michael J. Fox goes back to 1985 but everything's messed up, and his dad's dead. Nothing's the way it's supposed to be but he's the only one that knows it." Castle stared at her. "That's how I feel!" said Kate. "Only I have _no _idea what's going on because I never agreed to this! I didn't climb into any flying DeLorean. I didn't ask for this."

"Sometimes you can ask for something without realizing what you're really asking for." He said it like the line had just popped into his head, like it was a piece of advice he'd heard repeated so many times to him that it had lost all meaning.

But it meant something to her. How many times had she missed her mother? How many times had she struggled to fall asleep against the tears, wishing that her mom had never been killed?

It all fit together- if her mom had never been killed, then she never would have killed Dick Coonan. And if her mother had never been killed, then it made sense to believe that Bob Armand had never been killed either, which was why Montgomery was still alive but in a lower position. If her mother had never been murdered, then she never would have become a cop, never would have met Ryan and Esposito and Lanie. She never would have been partnered up with Castle.

"Damn ripple effect." Castle patted her on the shoulder like he was bringing her back into this strange reality.

"You want to head back to my apartment and… and watch _Back to the Future_?" he suggested. She laughed.

"Yes and no," she said. "Let's go back to your place and reassess the case, but I think I'd rather focus on my own paradoxes for now instead of dealing with Doc and Marty's." He nodded and the two of them headed down the street towards Castle's loft.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: "This is heavy" and "Great Scott" are exclamations repeated by the main characters in the movie **_**Back to the Future**_**, which was mentioned in the previous chapter. **

**Also, I'm SOOOO sorry for the super long hiatus, I did NaNoWriMo and couldn't write through November, and then it was hard to start this up again, and I was busy… anyway, here's the long-awaited return of the story!**

* * *

><p>"<em>It merely looked like the Earth and occupied the same coordinates in space-time." – Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams<em>

* * *

><p>Castle had, in a surprising act of helpfulness, dug a story-planning whiteboard out of his office, wiped it clean, and set it up in his living room. Beckett took two of his kitchen magnets and posted pictures of Basher's body and the crime scene that she'd taken with her phone and printed out. The sharp smell of the Expo marker as she wrote Alan's name at the top of the board was comfortingly familiar.<p>

"Just like the murder board," she smiled, standing back to admire it.

"The what board?"

"Never mind." Kate capped the marker and set it on the silver tray at the bottom of the board before resuming her contemplative position a couple of feet away from the board. Evidence and theories were spinning around in her mind, and this too was comfortingly familiar. "So, I'm pretty confident that it actually was Dick Coonan that killed Alan Basher," she said. She turned to face Castle as she filled him in on everything she'd figured out. He was standing in the middle of his family room with a somewhat dazed expression on his face. "Thing is, Coonan's a hired killer, so there's still someone out there who _wanted _Basher dead and contacted Coonan to make it happen."

"Whoa," said Castle, "this is heavy," earning himself an odd glance from Beckett. "Sorry," he explained, "ever since you brought of _Back to the Future _I've had lines and quotes from it running around my mind." She nodded, trying not to smile. This was Castle, alright, albeit an alternate version of him.

"I'm not sure if it would be helpful to go arrest Coonan and see what we can get out of him," she mused. "I don't know if he'd break."

"You don't know him well enough from your… uh, 'alternate reality'?" he replied.

"I killed him before we could get to talking," she answered. He wasn't quite sure what to say to that, so he joined her in perusing the board.

There was a long list of things Kate Beckett wanted. She wanted Castle to make morbidly funny remarks rather than wincing at the bloody autopsy picture. She wanted the help of Ryan, Esposito, and Lanie. She wanted to figure out what the hell was going on. She wanted her cop-self back, but she didn't want to lose what she had here: her mother. Montgomery. An apparent past relationship with Castle.

_Stop_. An instant mind-block went up inside of her. That last thought hadn't belonged there, and she wondered if it was a side-effect of being immersed in an alternate universe that had caused the unbidden idea to pop into her mind. _That _wasn't something she wanted, and it wasn't something she couldn't bear to lose. She'd be glad to return to her _normal _relationship with Castle.

She really didn't have enough time or brainpower to focus on solving the murder, getting back to her own world, _and _her confusing feelings for her partner. She pushed the Castle issues to the back of her mind and concentrated on the picture she was staring at: Alan Basher and the stab wounds on his abdomen and chest. Alan Basher, the ex-boyfriend she didn't remember.

For whatever reason, she began to wonder why and how they'd broken up. She wondered what the circumstances were, wondered if it had been messy. Her stomach filled with ice and she stumbled back onto the couch. "Oh, God…"

"What?" said Castle, hurrying to her side. "What is it?"

"Castle, what if it's me?" Her eyes were wide, searching, vulnerable, and she couldn't stop her hands from shaking. "What if I'm the one who told Coonan to kill Alan?"

"Well… why would you do that?" he said slowly, completely lost as to how to act. He wasn't sure of what she wanted to be convinced.

"I don't know, but I don't even know who I am," she said. "I'm not the person I think I am. I'm a drug-addicted moral-less actress who sleeps around. Maybe I also order people to be killed? I don't know!" Her eyes flicked upward like the answers were on the ceiling.

"Kate, look at me," said Castle. She did. "I don't think you killed Alan Basher." He didn't really think that- he didn't really know what to think. He just wanted her to calm down. "Although I'm sure that if you did, you had a very good reason." He got a small laugh out of her.

"Thanks," she murmured, catching the time on the cable box. "Whoa, is it already ten?"

"Is it?" he said. "My daughter's supposed to be getting back from her date around now."

"With Ashley?" Beckett tested.

"Yeah."

"Good kid." He didn't bother asking how she knew that, and she appreciated it. They were finally slipping into some sort of pattern, some variety of understanding. She instructed him to keep the murder board facing a wall in his office and grabbed her bag. As she turned to leave, though, a thought occurred to her. A thought entirely unrelated to the murder, but still intriguing.

"Castle," said Beckett. "Kiss me." He reacted like she'd just asked if he would travel to Pluto with her. "I have to see if it's the same. Just pretend like we're undercover as a couple."

"Okay." He said it nervously, but nevertheless stepped forward and pulled her to him. They kissed.

She'd fully intended to keep that other kiss, the one in her own universe, in mind as she kissed Castle. She had planned to evaluate this one and compare it to the other one. As soon as the kiss began, though, this proved impossible because she couldn't focus on anything but the feel of him and the passion in the kiss.

They broke away from each other, a bit out of breath. Castle appeared speechless. _It was an experiment_, Beckett thought to herself. _Nothing more. An experiment. _

"Well, goodnight," she said, her voice unnaturally high. "See you tomorrow." She hurried out the door and shut it behind her, taking several deep breaths to calm herself. Alone in the hall, she leaned against one of the walls and rocked her head back to stare at the ceiling. Her heart was thumping too quickly.

"Great _Scott_."


	10. Chapter 10

"_The precise casual connection between this tiny biological happenstance and a few other minor variations that exist in that slice of the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash- such as Tricia McMillan failing to leave with Zaphod Beeblebrox, abnormally low sales of pecan-flavored ice cream and the fact that the Earth on which all this occurred did not get demolished by the Vogons to make way for a new hyperspace bypass- is currently sitting at number 4,763,984,132 on the research project priority list at what was once the history department of the University of MaxiMegalon, and no one currently at the prayer meeting by the poolside appears to feel any sense of urgency about the problem." – Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams (evidently, the man responsible for most of my word count)_

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><p>Kate didn't have to work hard to avoid drawing too many parallels between this and first time she'd interrogated Dick Coonan. For one thing, their last interrogation had not taken place over the glossy pink dinette that she apparently owned. Also, last time she hadn't been bent on lunging across the table and scratching his eyes out.<p>

Castle kept a hand on her arm, noticing if not quite understanding the rage pulsing through her. He knew that if she attacked Coonan like she so clearly wanted to, she'd blow her cover both as a fake cop and as a person who seemed not to belong in this universe. Crazy as it seemed, he didn't want her taken as an insane person. He didn't want her taken away. Ever since their kiss last night, whatever _that _was, he felt reluctant to leave her side. A sense of protectiveness had come over him. It didn't make any sense; after all, she was the one with the gun.

"Mr. Coonan, do you have a job?" She tried to keep her voice from shaking. It hadn't occurred to her until this moment that she might be too upset to get through this without shooting Dick again.

"Yeah, I work at a shipping company," he said, sounding exasperated and tired of these questions. Castle guessed that it was an act- he had to know why they were questioning him. "Why are you doing this in here? On TV they always put people in those rooms with the tables and fake mirrors."

"On TV," Beckett repeated scathingly. "You think I don't know this isn't your first police interrogation?"

"Double negative," Castle muttered to her. She kicked him under the table.

"Listen, Dick," she said, leaning forward, "you can't hide what you've done- _everything _you've done. We're having CSUs search your apartment and if they find anything suspicious- like say, the remnants of a nosebleed…" She let that hang in the air, sure he'd gotten prison threats before.

Castle stared at her. Bluff after bluff. No matter what she said about alternate universes, he knew she was an actress, and a talented one at that. Dick flicked his eyes up at her, and Castle was reminded of a snake, calculating carefully before he unwound his coils and struck.

And then the "snake" collapsed into a desperate pile of anxious sweat, shakes, and what looked like terrified tears. "I didn't do anything, I swear! I don't want to go to jail, don't send me there. I'm just a shipping guy, really! Please!" He leaned forward pleadingly, nervousness in every arch of his body. It definitely wasn't an act. If anything, the cool calmness he had demonstrated before was just a cover to hide this mess of a man.

"Um…" Kate looked a little stunned and confused. She glanced at Castle as if he would have some useful insight, but he just shrugged. Evidently, he was just as shocked to see Coonan break down like that.

o-o-o-o-o-o

"Damn it," said Beckett a few minutes later, after they had released Dick Coonan (who'd looked about to wet himself). She pulled two bottles of Diet Coke out of the refrigerator and passed one to Castle. "I hate parallel universes."

"At least you didn't have to shoot him," said Castle.

"Did you see the guy?" she said, sitting across from Castle at the dinette. "If my hand went anywhere near my gun he would've melted into a puddle on the floor." Castle took a swig of the soda and made a face.

"You got anything besides Diet Coke?"

"Nope," she sighed, taking a sip and making a face as well. "Apparently Actress Kate is just a richer version of Rachel Greene from _Friends. _It's bugging the hell out of me."

She drummed her fingers on the table, clearly anxious to get the killer. The Coonan incident had seriously dispirited her. If he was just a nerve-wracked wimp, then what else could she be missing? Maybe the laws of physics worked differently here. Maybe murder was committed for entirely different reasons. In a world where Dick Coonan was a sweaty mess under pressure, then for all she knew overalls were runway material and _Jersey Shore _was an insightful documentary.

"We're back to square one," Beckett sighed. "I was so _sure _it was Dick Coonan. Fit his MO perfectly."

"Well, use that," urged Castle. "Think. Who else might have his exact knife and way of killing? It's got to be someone connected to him." She frowned and sunk down to the table on her elbows, rocking back and forth on her heels, at eye level with the lip of her Diet Coke bottle.

"I don't know," she said. "I'm beginning to think I'm of no use here. I don't understand anything. I'm like an alien."

"Too bad you can't phone home," he quipped, evoking a small smile from her.

"Thanks a lot," she replied, "now you've got me craving Reese's Piece… Jack!" She jumped up, seeming to realize something. Castle stared at her, confused.

"Reese's what?"

"Jack Coonan!" she exclaimed. "Dick's brother! He was tipping off the FBI so Dick killed him. Back 'home', I mean. But he's probably alive here, and I _think _what happened was the two of them have reversed roles. Which means the killer isn't _Dick _Coonan, it's _Jack _Coonan!" Rick watched her with some fascination as she worked through the pieces, sliding them into place. Regardless of her logic, the definitive and confident way with which she announced her insight seemed to assure the fact that she was right.

"Wait," he said, remembering something, "even if it is Jack Coonan, he's still just a hired killer."

"Right," she said. "So what we need to do now if figure out motive." Her eyes flicked up to him. "Okay, you're always listing these off. What are the three biggest motives for murder?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Oh, come on, you've got to know!" said Beckett. "Don't you watch CSI?"

"What's CSI?"

"I _hate _parallel universes!"

* * *

><p>Less than half an hour later, the two of them had returned to Castle's loft. Beckett pulled out the murder board from where she had parked it against the wall and uncapped a red Expo marker. "Okay, three biggest reasons," said Detective Beckett. She drew a heart, a dollar sign, and the word "CRIME" on the side of the whiteboard. "Love, money, and to cover up a crime."<p>

Castle came to stand beside her as he perused to board. "Love," explained Beckett, gesturing to the heart, "that would be me, and we already know I didn't do it." She drew a line through the heart, reminding Castle of the popular doodle of an arrow through a heart. "Money- well, he wasn't robbed, and all of his money goes to charity after he died." She drew a line through the dollar sign. "I can't really see a group of orphans hiring Jack Coonan."

"Which leaves covering up a crime," said Castle, in an attempt to sound like he knew what he was doing. They sat there in silence for a second, thinking, before turning to each other at the exact same moment and saying, "I know who the killer is!"


	11. Chapter 11

"_The Earth with which we are here concerned, because of its particular orientation in the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash, was hit by a neutrino that other Earths were not." – Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams_

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><p>For the fourth time, Castle turned to Beckett where they sat in the back of the neon yellow taxicab and said, "We tell the cops what we know, and then we walk away, okay?" She rolled her eyes and continued to drum her fingers on the car door, anxious to get out of the cab.<p>

"Yeah, sure, whatever," she said noncommittally, also for the fourth time.

"You know, when you say that I feel like you're not really listening to me," said Castle, his jaw set. At his apartment Beckett had suggested they run out and apprehend the killers at that moment, but he'd been adamant that they turn this over to the real cops. It reminded her of their adventure in Los Angeles- her desperate to go rogue and achieve justice, him begging to call the police.

Kate looked at him pointedly and replied, "Yeah, sure, whatever."

They got out in front of the 12th precinct. Beckett figured that it would be easier to tell Ryan and Esposito and let them handle it than to track down the cops actually in charge of the case. Actually, Beckett figured it would be easier to go and hunt down the killers herself, but Castle was vehemently protesting against that idea, and while normally she was higher up in the pecking order, she felt she needed him to vouch for her. Besides, no way was she confronting anyone without some form of backup.

She pulled him into the elevator, drinking in the familiar smell of it. If she never got back to her own universe, this might be her last visit to the precinct. The thought worried her, so she shoved it to the back of her brain and jammed the button for their floor.

They saw her as soon as the elevator doors opened. "Are we on _Punk'd _or something?" muttered Ryan to Esposito when Beckett stepped into the bullpen, accompanied by Castle. To her he said, "You can't keep showing up here. We have work to get done."

"I'll give you an autograph."

"What do you want?" Esposito shot his partner an annoyed glance, but Ryan didn't look away from Kate. She reflected upon how fortunate it was that Ryan erred on the side of obsessive when it came to being a fan of something or someone.

"I know who killed Alan Basher," said Beckett.

"Are you still on that?" groaned Esposito. "You're not a cop! You can't poke your head into every investigation. There is a team of homicide cops working on the case."

"Then can you tell them that the guys who robbed his neighbor's apartment also murdered him?" said Kate, looking between the two of them.

"No," said Esposito, but Ryan brushed him off.

"We'll tell them," he promised. Beckett sighed, shot an annoyed "are you happy now?" glance to Castle, and hit the elevator button. "When do I get my autograph?" asked Ryan as the doors slid shut.

"Um… call my agent!" said Beckett.

"Who's your agent?"

"Estelle Leonard!" The doors closed. Castle gave her an odd look.

"Who's Estelle Leonard?" he asked. She shrugged a little sheepishly.

"She was a character on _Friends_," she admitted. Castle laughed as they left the precinct. "This is why I need to get back to my own universe. I watch way too much TV here."

* * *

><p>That night, after Castle had made sure that Beckett had arrived safely back to her apartment (and had gifted her copies of his Derrick Storm series so she had something to do besides watching reruns), he collapsed onto his couch beside Amy with two glasses of wine. "Thanks," she said with a smile, taking one of the glasses.<p>

He smiled back at her and took a sip. It was nice spending time with her. Lately, he'd been so caught up with Kate and the murder that he hadn't had a real conversation with Amy in days. "How was recording today?"

She groaned. "Awful. I woke up with a scratchy throat and trying to sing my refrain for 'Get On The Floor' was like swallowing sandpaper."

"Nice simile," he commented. "I'm using that in the next Maia Sound book."

"There's _another _Maia Sound book?" she laughed. "I thought she had all her affairs in order and was back to her perfect life." She was referring to his latest novel, _The Music of Sound_, in which Maia had finally gotten married and put out her first album.

"Oh, that may be, but when it comes to celebrities, they have a way of having their affairs fall into disorder," he said, winking at her. "Or so I've heard. Hey, how's this for a title? _Sound Bites_." She rolled her eyes.

"So what have you been up to?" asked Amy. "I feel like I've been having a relationship with your answering machine for the past couple of days."

"Oh, remember that actress?" said Castle. "Kate Beckett?" Amy nodded. "She was in town, wanted my help with the whole… Alan Basher thing." Amy looked sympathetic at the mention of the dead actor's name.

"Poor girl," she murmured. "He was a great guy. I did a soundtrack with him once."

"That's it!" said Castle. "_Sound Tracks_!" He looked to Amy for approval, but she just shook her head. "Terrible loss," he added, a little too late. Amy leaned into his shoulder, suddenly reflective. She sipped her wine.

"Hey Rick?" she said after a while.

"Yeah?"

"That you're seeing Kate… I mean, there's nothing…"

"No!" said Castle, this time a bit early. "No, no, no, there's absolutely… no. I told you before, Ames, that would be way too meta." She smiled again.

"'Kay."

"_Safe and Sound_!" More eye rolling. More wine sipping. The phone rang. "Hello?" said Castle into the mouthpiece.

"Hey." He heard Kate's whisper on the other end of the line and wondered why she wasn't speaking at normal volume. That fact alone should have alerted him to the realization that something was wrong. "I need your help."

"With?" Amy shot him a questioning look, but he was focused on the other end of the line. There was a pause.

"I broke into the killers' HQ," she said finally, still in an undertone. Castle ran a hand across his face, upset at himself. He should've known that she couldn't sit back and let the real cops do their work. He should've seen it in her eyes.

"I'm on my way."


	12. Chapter 12

"'_You know,' he said, sitting back, reflectively, 'it's at times like this that you kind of wonder if it's worth worrying about the fabric of space-time and the casual integrity of the multidimensional probability matrix and the potential collapse of all waveforms in the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash and all that sort of stuff that's been bugging me.'" – Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams_

* * *

><p>Beckett scanned the gray basement whose window she'd just pulled herself through, the fingers of her right hand fidgeting and tapping on the gun in her holster. She drew it, deciding that it would be best to be prepared should the thieveskillers above decide to come down and investigate whatever thump or thud she must have made hopping onto the cold concrete floor of the unfinished cellar. As she held the weapon out in front of her, she noted with some satisfaction that the muscles in her arms were just as finely toned as they would have been were she a detective in this parallel world. Actress-Kate must hit up the LA gym quite often, she thought to herself.

The basement was large and square, with a plywood staircase in the middle leading up to the main floor. Shelves lined the four walls, stacked with the usual cans of paint and storage cases, as well as some items specific to these house owners: tools of the trade like crowbars and lock picks. She spotted dental supplies she knew from a case she'd once worked with Castle was used in car thievery.

Kate had realized what a stupid idea it was coming in here alone halfway through the tiny inches-off-the-ground window. She also knew that if she called in the real police, her being there would compromise the investigation and ruin any chance of catching the criminals. She had to be the one to stop them, and she had to do it now. She had to call Castle.

She was standing near the stairs with an ear pointed upward, trying to decipher the muffled voices upstairs, when the tap on the window shocked her almost out of her shoes. She choked down the squeak of surprise and turned to see Castle's face framed in the window. "Come in," she mouthed, and watched as he slid open the fortunately unlocked window and propelled himself through it, crouching as he landed and absorbing the impact on the balls of his feet.

"Hey," said Castle, a bit too casually for the situation. Beckett glanced around.

"It's just you?"

"Who were you expecting?" he asked. "Mal Reynolds?"

"You didn't bring any backup?" One cop alone was a mistake, but a cop plus an inexperienced fluff writer was just as bad, if not worse. She'd expected him to show up with an army of the "guys" he supposedly had everywhere. The two of them alone were woefully outnumbered.

Castle grinned at her. "And dilute the dream team?" He slid the window shut behind him and loped towards her, acting like this was all just a big game to him. "Come on, we're the good guys. We always win."

"Castle," she hissed, "this is _reality_." She paused, considering. "Well, okay, not _my _reality, but reality nonetheless." To look at him it was like she hadn't said anything. "Come on, let's just get this done or die trying."

* * *

><p>A few steps down from the door to the main floor, eyelevel with the aging hardwood floor, they could see a thick film of dust coating the floor, interspersed with footprints. They learned from running through it and dodging bullets that the filth left from years of use and no cleaning made the floor slippery.<p>

There were four men at the table debating whether to up and leave New York after the Alan Basher incident when they heard the basement door creak open and froze, each landing a hand on his gun. The first to draw his gun and point it at the door was suddenly on the floor, the crack of Beckett's gun only registering as the blood pooled around the fallen robber.

It was like a paused movie starting up again. Beckett and Castle came around the edge of the door and the three remaining men started firing. Beckett downed another as Castle ducked behind a counter, feeling unprepared as the only unarmed participant.

A bullet came flying towards Kate's chest and she had to fall to the floor to avoid it, slipping and landing on her stomach. She pulled herself under the kitchen table while silently cursing herself for foregoing the bulletproof vest. One of the men dropped to his knees, firing off a shot that missed her by centimeters. Taking advantage of the near-frictionless floor, she grabbed a leg of the table and pushed hard, sending herself gliding across the floor. When she hit the opposite wall and aimed up, shooting almost at random, she landed a bullet in the standing man's stomach.

As the gunshots rained around him, Castle opened the nearest cabinet door and searched frantically for a weapon of some sort. Cheese grater? That would only work if he got close enough to shred up someone's face. Colander? Only if death by dry pasta were an option.

Frying pan? Castle weighed the panhandle in his hand, contemplating it. Remembering the latest Disney movie that he'd taken Alexis to see, he held it above his head and practiced a swing. Yes, he thought to himself, he could definitely bash someone's head in with this.

Meanwhile, Beckett was keeping the remaining two men busy by tobogganing across the floor, shooting upward shots at them every time she stopped. One of the men was staggering towards her clutching a wound on his left side and aiming his gun at her; the other one had stopped to swear and clutch a shoulder injury.

Standing up in one fluid motion, Beckett spun and kicked the staggering man squarely in the chest, knocking him off his feet. His head cracked against a wall and he slumped down to the floor, motionless. Immediately, she tackled the man who'd been shot in the shoulder and threw him to the floor, producing handcuffs seemingly from nowhere and cuffing his hands together. He grunted and kicked at her, but seemed too weak and cornered to put up more of a fight.

"You're under arrest for the robbery of Gretchen Prescott," said Beckett, "and the murder of Alan Basher." What she didn't see was the man she'd kicked, struggling towards her with his gun still out. One foot came up, then another, advancing towards her. "You have the right to remain silent," she continued through clenched teeth. "Anything you say can-"

_Clang_! Just as his finger found the trigger, the man crumpled under the business end of Castle's frying pan. The writer spun the cooking instrument around in his hand, a cocky grin lighting up his face as he looked at Beckett.

"Tell me you saw that!" he exclaimed, winning a smile from her. It could have been from relief that she had been saved, from thankfulness, from amusement, or perhaps just from the memory of their very first scrape with death, when he had spoken the same words to her with equal pride and delight. Maybe, though, she was just smiling because she had accomplished what she had been trying to do since she had woken up in this strange and confusing parallel universe in which her mother was alive and she was an actress. She had captured the men who had murdered Alan Basher. For some reason, she felt that everything else would just fall into place.

The cops, for the most part, cooperated with Kate. They seemed to have suspected the men she had attacked of the robbery already, if not the murder. Despite some doubts, again most of the police seemed on board with the idea that Basher had been killed to silence him of the robbery he had witnessed.

* * *

><p>Two days after breaking into the thieves' house, two days after calling Ryan and Esposito and informing them of the injured men lying on the floor surrounding her, two days after the last time she had seen Castle, Kate Beckett stood on her mother's porch, leaning against the front door, trying to bring herself to knock.<p>

The events of the past week were racing through her head, and now there was a new worry- on top of the worry that she would never get home, there were worries involving the home she got back to. The last thing she could remember, she was giving the eulogy at her captain's funeral. Why, then, did she not remember going home and going to sleep? She was sure it had to have been the last thing she'd done- why else would she have woken up in bed? And yet, she only remembered the funeral.

As Kate raised a fist to knock on the door, gathering her courage, she heard the pebbles on the walkway behind her crunch. Instincts kicked in, and she spun to face whoever was following her, hand dropping to her hip holster.

It was Castle- Richard Castle, writer and partner and it didn't matter if he wasn't _her _Castle, from _her _universe. He must have cared about her, otherwise why would he be here? Something still lingered, she thought, whatever it was that existed between herself and Castle, the _real _Castle, had leaked into this universe as well.

"Kate," he said, and she exhaled heavily.

"Hey," she said with a weak half-smile, "I was just-"

"Kate," he interrupted, and she stared at him. Something was off… "Kate," he said yet again. "Kate, please, come on."

"What are you-"

"_Wake up_!"


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: OK, so I was a little- well, a lot- backed up on this story, so the conclusion is kind of behind-times. Still, I hope you all enjoy it. **

* * *

><p>"<em>Anything that happens, happens. Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again. It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order, though." – Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams <em>

* * *

><p>"<em>Wake up<em>." Castle leaned over the hospital bed, a hand on Beckett's shoulder, shaking her lightly. He couldn't remember for how long she had been out. Something more than a day. Esposito had been keeping him updated as to time, but he had lost track…

However many hours she had been comatose, he wanted her to wake up _now_. Something immensely important, he couldn't say what, was hanging on this moment. Since he had watched her drop to the ground at Montgomery's funeral, he had not felt this urgently that he needed her. He needed her to wake up _now_.

"Kate, please," he said, his voice dropping to a low whisper. Across the room, Lanie was sinking lower in her chair, her nose deeper into her magazine, giving him his moment of pleading with the unconscious woman on the bed. He wondered in the back of his mind if he had done this before now.

And then, against all odds, her eyelids popped open, almost reflexively. It wasn't like watching the tentative fluttering of a dazed person, but the shock of a person breaking away from a nightmare. "Kate?"

"Stop saying that," she mumbled to his amazement. For a moment, he was at a loss for words.

And then he had too many- he was saying her name, mixed in with arrays of "You're okay" and "Thank God."

"Castle?"said Beckett. For some reason, she seemed more shocked to see him leaning over her than he had been to see her wake up. "Castle, is that you?"

"Yes," he said, leaning back to see that she was really awake, and then he seemed to remember that Lanie was there as well, beaming and running over to the cot. "Yes, it's me, are you okay?"

"I think…" she murmured, flexing her arms. "I- what's Derrick Storm's job?" Castle blinked, and Lanie looked worried.

"Kate-"

"What's Derrick Storm's job?" she said again.

A voice from the doorway- Lanie must have summoned a doctor when she had realized that her best friend was awake. "Just answer her questions," he said. "She's bound to be a bit confused."

"Right," said Castle, sounding a bit confused himself. "Derrick Storm is a private investigator."

"Oh, thank God, I'm back," she whispered, mostly to herself. "I'm back. I'm- what happened?" She looked at Rick. "Why does my chest hurt?" Despite her gaze focused on her partner, it was the doctor in the doorway who answered.

"You were shot by a sniper during your eulogy," he informed her. "Dr. Davidson was able to bring you back."

The rest was a blur of people hugging her cautiously. As the day ended, and her visitors gravitated out of the room after it had been announced that she would stay overnight in the hospital, Beckett realized that Castle had not left his place beside her.

"Hey," she said, tired. Somewhere in the back of her head she wondered why the doctors had allowed him to stay, but she didn't really mind. After ascertaining that she really was back in the right universe- _reality_, she realized, the reality that wasn't all part of a coma-dream- she didn't really concern herself with little things like being alone in the room with her partner.

"You should sleep," he suggested, sounding for the first time in days at peace.

"I want to know…" she said, her voice dropping in her exhaustion, "I want to know why you decided to write mystery novels."

He had stopped being bemused over her questions, as there had been several strange ones over the course of the day. "Well," he said, "I was thirteen…"

**THE END**


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